‘Unlocking value of rural livestock‘ in The Herald (Zimbabwe), 2 March 2017

‘Zim to benefit from livestock production‘ in Bulls n Bears, 23 February 2017

‘Swazi Beef Model boasts six registered feedlots‘ in  The Herald (Zimababwe), 21 February 2017

The International Conference on livestock value chain finance and access, Swazi TV News, 21 February 2017

But efforts by research and development partners are offering renewed hope for livestock financing in Southern Africa. This was revealed at an International Conference on Livestock Value Chain Finance and Access to Credit, organized by the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) in partnership with the Swaziland Water and Agricultural Development Enterprise (SWADE) and Swaziland’s Micro Finance Unit (MFU) 21-23 Feb 2017.

The main objectives of the conference were to:

1. Demonstrate sound business case models for low-cost feeding regimes
2. Divide the value chain actors into segmented sub-groups linked together
3. Share experiences and research in helping smallholder livestock producers/actors access finance/credit
4. Support a productive dialogue among livestock value chain actors, financial institutions, scholars, private-sector companies and government institutions
5. Asses ways to replicate and scale success to more low-income countries/regions

Read the whole post here.

The conference will be held in Royal Swazi Spa – Ezulwini – Swaziland from 21 -23 February 2017.

The Livelihoods, Gender and Impact Program overview got 46 comments, as per 14 May at 10 am. LGI has 3 research teams: 1. Smallholder Competitiveness in value chain; 2. Gender; and 3. Impact Assessment (IA). Isabelle Baltenweck presented the overview, Alessandra Galiè presented on gender while Lucy Lapar presented on Smallholder Competitiveness. We didn’t get a chance to present on IA. A summary of the discussions is organized as follows:

• There is increasing recognition and interest in gender research, as demonstrated by the discussions around the ‘root causes’ of gender inequalities and the role of research in not only understanding them but also identifying mechanisms to address them. There was also discussion related to how gender needs to be mainstreamed in technology development and delivery mechanism.
• Scientists from other programs highlighted the need for us to be more proactive in impact assessment studies (both ex ante and ex post), linking with their work and providing feedbacks. A couple of examples were highlighted, including the work with the Genebank. Still on M&E and IA, it is worth noting that the team has 2 functions: own research and support to other programs. We increasingly see monitoring data and evaluation results as a great opportunity for valuable scientific investigations. For example, we collaborate closely with RMG to improve the design of interventions and data collection activities in various projects to achieve this.
• The topic of ‘innovations’ was also discussed, and its place in ILRI, as it was originally in LGI(I). It was clarified that this issue was brought up at IRMC and a task force was constituted
• The link between PTVC and LGI was also discussed. It was clarified that LGI has a team focusing on farm-level competitiveness and mechanisms to improve smallholders’ access to markets and services, working closely with value chain development initiatives. There is therefore a clear linkage with PTVC, which deals with value chain research.
• In terms of new or stronger collaboration, joint work with LSE should cover not only climate change but other environmental externalities also.
• It was finally suggested that in the proposal development checklist, there should be some questions around impact and gender and how these are budgeted, who will be involved in order to avoid these aspects getting lip service once project get funded.
• The regions asked for a stronger presence and activities! We will take up the challenge!

 Exploring gender perceptions of livestock ownership– Alessandra Galiè

The presentation ‘Exploring gender perceptions of livestock ownership’ received 32 comments from male and female colleagues from various disciplines. The comments were generally positive about the usefulness of the findings given that a number of people are working on data that include ‘ownership of livestock’. For the purpose of this summary the comments were clustered into 4 focus issues:

Decision-making. The largest number of comments focused on decision-making. Decision-making was introduced in the presentation as an example of a more concrete question – than ‘ownership of livestock’, which the paper shows means little – that can be used in studies looking at food security and gender equity. Comments in general welcomed the idea of focusing on decision-making. Some asked about tools to do so. Others asked about ‘how comprehensive it is to focus on decision making about livestock’: are more details on what other assets (beyond livestock) need to be included when looking at decision-making? is a focus on decision-making sufficient to assess gender roles?. Some asked for advice on how to deal with understanding the complexity of decision-making at household level. Some mentioned how to work with instances of co-ownership.

Gender norms. Some questions focused on the issues of gender-based priorities about livestock management for food security. The presentation had made the point that supporting decision-making –rather than ownership -might have more direct impact on food security. However, decision-making alone might also be insufficient because locally, gender-specific constraints might exist beyond decision-making. An example was brought forward from the paper about respondents from Ethiopia who argued that, together with decision-making about livestock, more flexible gender norms about what roles women can take in the management of the farm and livestock were needed to progress towards food security.

Methodology. One question was asked about the validity of the findings given the small sample size of 140 respondents from 3 countries. Because the aim of the paper was to show the large variability of ‘understandings of ownership’ – even among the small number of respondents – the small sample size was not considered a weakness.

Next steps. Some suggestions were put forward on how to progress with this piece of research. One commenter mentioned assessing through observation the daily practices regarding decision-making, management, benefit sharing of livestock. This component will enrich the understanding of how livestock exist within household dynamics. An exchange between one commenter and the presenter resulted in the formulation of a new research question ‘how is the vague nature of OL used in various context to perpetuate gender inequity and how, on the contrary, this very vagueness provides spaces for contestation?’

Bringing new insights to livestock science: economics and decision-making– Lucy Lapar

Comments from colleagues can be summed up in three categories, namely: 1) on tools and analytical approaches that can be shared and how they have been used in previous work, as well as how these can be applied to new/ongoing work to address questions about farmer choices on selling vis-à-vis keeping animals, for example; 2) insights on how some institutional and organization solutions to address smallholder constraints to effectively access input and output market have performed in actual practice; and 3) the need for new insights to better connect research with desired outcomes and how to make this happen.

1. Alignment of BecA-ILRI Hub’s Program with CRPs: The alignment is necessary to better serve smallholder farming communities and African NARS in various aspects that includes identification of technology need, resource mobilization, technology development, capacity building, expansion of BecA extended faculties, effective supervision of ABCF Fellows, and dissemination of the technologies.
2. Strong and functional collaboration between BecA-ILRI Hub and ILRI: A functional collaborations would be highly useful to gather critical mass to conduct research, effective resource mobilization and strong capacity building of African NARS scientists. Joint appointment, joint research team, join research proposal, the common focal person for the program that overlaps between BecA-ILRI Hub and ILRI have been suggested. Some collaboration in these areas has been already taking place and we need to have more and effective collaborations in future.
3. BecA-ILRI Hub is a huge still quite untapped resource: BecA-ILRI Hub is huge but to be fully tapped resource available within ILRI for other programs and ILRI projects. Therefore, ILRI scientists are encouraged to use “state of the art” biosciences facilities. Similarly, there are some interesting ‘integrated, non-bioscience’ works currently on-going at BecA-ILRI Hub that can be better connected into other ILRI pillar for better outcomes.
4. Technology scaling up outside East and Central Africa: Research Program at BecA-ILRI Hub generates technologies that are applicable to farmers’ outside Eastern and Central African countries (BecA’s mandate countries). Therefore, working with ILRI closer will help in the scaling up of these technologies (e.g. Brachiaria grasses, Aflatoxins monitoring & detection) across the world.

On the presumption that all ILRI scientists are working to influence decision-makers in developing countries in one way, or to one extent, or another, here is some practical advice on what they tend to listen to and what they tend to ignore.

These excerpts are from a blog post this week (12 May 2015) by Duncan Green, strategic adviser for Oxfam GB and author of From Poverty to Power.

The new report Green quotes from (set out in indented display type below) identified:

• 5 overall trends in external assessment influence
• 12 attributes of more and less influential assessments
• 6 factors that make countries more or less likely to draw upon external sources of analysis and advice
• 12 intended and unintended assessment effects

‘. . . [A] new report, The Marketplace of Ideas for Policy Change summarizes a survey of 6,750 policymakers and practitioners in 126 low- and middle-income countries to find out which of the innumerable bits of advice and analysis churned out by aid agencies, international organizations and NGOs actually influence their work.

‘What’s most alarming is how original this is – I am still looking for a similar exercise on the MDGs, which might have made the whole post-2015 process less of a donor-driven gabfest. Right now the SDG wallahs should be reading this paper and asking – what kind of reporting structure might actually influence government behaviour? . . .

(1) ‘Advocating on family/gender policy has the best chances of success, anti-corruption the worst:

The family and gender policy domain is one characterized by relatively high levels of external assessment influence, relatively low levels of (net) domestic opposition to reform, and reasonably good odds of success in reform implementation. This finding suggests that external efforts to encourage and support family and gender reforms may be particularly fruitful. Anti-corruption stands apart as the policy domain with highest level of (net) domestic opposition to reform and the worst track record of reform implementation.

(2) ‘Similarly,

The democracy and decentralization policy domains appear to be least susceptible to external influence at the agenda-setting stage. . . .

(3)

External assessment influence is strongest at the agenda-setting stage of the policymaking process.

‘– i.e. get in early in the policy funnel, help define problems etc. . . .

(4)

Paying attention to ‘nuts and bolts of government’ may result in greater assessment influence.

‘Please note, all campaigners – think about advocating on boring but important stuff like data collection, staff training, info management.

(5)

Country-specific diagnostics generally exert greater influence than cross-country benchmarking exercises. . . .

(6)

External assessments that rely on host government data are more influential.

‘Use government data, rather than your own, or some international body’s, and you are half way to getting buy in.

(7)

The longer an assessment’s track record of publication, the more influential it becomes vis-à-vis others.

‘International organizations tend to have much more staying power than INGOs, producing annual reports on this or that, which slowly accumulate brand awareness and impact. By hopping from issue to issue, INGOs may keep the media interested, but they sacrifice impact.

(8)

Neither incentives nor penalties seem to easily explain assessment influence. . . .

(9)

Prescriptive assessments appear to be slightly more influential than descriptive assessments, and decision-makers in the developing world seem to want more, not less, specific policy guidance.

‘OK, that’s definitely a challenge to all the complexity wallahs and Doing Development Differently crowd who say that outsiders should focus on highlighting problems, not suggesting solutions (which need to be designed by local actors).

(10)

Assessments were influential because they promoted reforms that aligned with the priorities of national leadership.

‘A “working with the grain” argument that it’s best to try and influence ongoing processes rather than start new ones.

(11)

Senior government leaders and their deputies engage with external assessments in different ways. One potential interpretation of this finding is that leaders, mindful of their domestic audiences, project strength in the face of external pressure, while their deputies work behind the scenes to secure material rewards from donor agencies and international organizations.

 

(12) ‘Some important findings on the limits of external influence:

The picture that emerges is not one of governments being cajoled or coerced into pursuing reforms that align with donor priorities, but rather that governments pick and choose assessments based on whether they advance domestic priorities.

External sources of analysis and advice rarely help to neutralize opposition to reform or build coalitions in support of policy change.

 

(13) ‘And on the range of country types:

Some of the most successful reformers ‘go-it-alone’ and shield the domestic policy formulation and execution from external pressure (e.g., Rwanda and Ethiopia), while others rely more heavily on external sources of analysis and advice (e.g., Liberia and Georgia).

 

(14) ‘Some weaknesses:

‘It’s just a survey – so no in depth interviews, focus groups etc to dig deeper, which I am sure would have produced further insight.

‘Massive blind spot on critical junctures – policy makers everywhere ignore advice until they need it, which is often after a scandal, crisis or obvious failure in previous policy. Building detailed timelines with decision makers would have revealed much more about how they take up policy advice and analysis at such moments.

‘Also nothing on the role of people and institutions outside government in persuading the state to adopt particular pieces of analysis – coalitions, insider-outsider alliances etc. This is a world where civil servants and pols read or don’t read/listen to reports – in real life, things are a bit more complicated than that.

‘The good news is that the AidData lab that conducted the survey plans to repeat it (and so accumulate influence, presumably). Now can someone apply this approach to the SDGs, please?’

Read the new report in full: The Marketplace of Ideas for Policy Change Who do developing world leaders listen to and why?, April 2015 Executive Summary, AidData, http://www.aiddata.org

Note: AidData is a research and innovation lab that seeks to improve development outcomes by making development finance data more accessible and actionable.

Read Duncan’s Green’s article on his From Poverty to Power blog: Which bits of advice do developing country decision makers actually listen to? Great new research, 12 May 2015.

Be sure to check out the Mahider resources that Abenet Yabowork kindly just uploaded for us.

Here is where you will find the following:

All outputs of ILRI programs: https://cgspace.cgiar.org/handle/10568/27866

Outputs of the CGIAR research programs (CRPs) published by ILRI.
First go to the home page of Mahider here: https://cgspace.cgiar.org/handle/10568/1
From there, in the righthand column under the ‘Discover’ section and the sub-heading titled ‘CGIAR Research Programs’, click open the CRP you want.

Note that Livestock and Fish materials published by other centres are available here: https://cgspace.cgiar.org/handle/10568/3112

On the same Mahider home page, https://cgspace.cgiar.org/handle/10568/1, and in the same righthand column, under the ‘Discover’ heading, you will find the ‘Regions’ sub-heading, where you can click open any of ILRI’s main target regions, e.g.:

East Africa: https://cgspace.cgiar.org/handle/10568/1/browse?value=EAST+AFRICA&type=region
South Africa: https://cgspace.cgiar.org/handle/10568/1/browse?value=SOUTHERN+AFRICA&type=region
West Africa: https://cgspace.cgiar.org/handle/10568/1/browse?value=WEST+AFRICA&type=region
Southeast Asia:https://cgspace.cgiar.org/handle/10568/1/browse?value=SOUTHEAST+ASIA&type=region
South Asia: https://cgspace.cgiar.org/handle/10568/1/browse?value=SOUTH+ASIA&type=region
East Asia: https://cgspace.cgiar.org/handle/10568/1/browse?value=EAST+ASIA&type=region
Latin America: https://cgspace.cgiar.org/handle/10568/27866/discover?filtertype=region&filter_relational_operator=equals&filter=LATIN+AMERICA

What does the new prominence of food safety and human health in the CG strategic research framework mean for ILRI?

Health and food safety has never had higher ranking in the CG. We think this offers opportunities for ILRI. Apart from mycotoxins, no other center has any substantive capacity in food safety or human health. The FERG report out in October is going to say mycotoxins don’t matter that much for human health, but the microbes and pathogens we work on are of enormous importance. We think there should be two new flagships in phase 2: one on food safety and one on human health. We have solid epidemiological and laboratory capacity (although more is needed) but we need to leverage economic, policy and gender expertise.

What are you doing for endemic disease?

Endemic diseases are very important but don’t fit in the remit of FSZ – in fact we have been working on them because we recognize a “one health” approach which doesn’t artificially divide human and animal health. But ILRI is not well organised for One Health.

…… and chickens?

From the FSZ perspective, poultry are important because of their role in zoonotic disease –both endemic and emerging and generation of antimicrobial resistance. We think they may have a role in environmental enteropathy. There are advantages of working in a value chain, but not to the exclusion of more important risks and benefits. A broader L&F would be able to address poultry from the perspectives of resilience, nutrition and health externalities.

You say 6.5 million people are getting from safer milk. Where do the figures come from?

The 6.5 million consumers is based on a) surveys on the number of milk traders and the consumers they supply b) surveys on the number of traders who have been trained and certified c) evidence on the improvement of milk safety as a result of training. Five million are in Kenya and 1.5 million in Guwahti, the major milkshed in Assam, India. We are working this year to strengthen these impact assessments by additional field evaluations. We think this model has proven to be sustainable (projects ended 3-9 years ago but still delivering benefits) and scalable (6.5 million consumers reached) and we want to make a case for donors to invest more.

Publish or perish: how can we get more time for writing?

The commenters made helpful suggestions: For instance could one day per week be reserved for this? Or a more explicit recognition within the KRAs? Invest a lot in high quality research support staff? Cut down on meetings? I think If we really see evidence and influence as a key strategy which we invest in, track progress on, and reward good performance in, then the ILRI culture will change, and the papers will ‘write themselves’.

IPM FSZ Milk and Fish Safety in Zambia – Mwansa Songe

How do you get stakeholder inputs?

We are in the process of forming a Food Safety Advisory Committee at national level, and at provincial level an innovation platform for each of the two products, which will allow for engagement even with different players along the value chain.

Why milk and fish?

Local along with community members identified fish and milk as high risk foods eaten in large quantities with poor preservation methods and hygiene. A field study of fish value chains highlighted dried fish as of particular concern. We have now performed microbiological sampling of fish from markets and fresh milk (sour milk to be done), to confirm this and guide future investigations (awaiting lab results).

Is collective action an opportunity for dairy development?

In Western Zambia there is lots of grass, lots of cattle yet dairy value chains are largely informal and productivity is low. Investments in facilities are needed but production needs to increase to justify these investments, yet there is no current access to sizeable markets to justify this investment. Looking at food safety and quality is one aspect, but whilst a holistic approach is ultimately required a sensible option may be to try to improve one aspect, such as basic cattle nutrition or health, which would potentiate the next steps, e.g. improved breeds, AI and milk yields, which could allow more investment in milk quality and supply chain infrastructure.

What approach does AAS follow to assess food safety from production to consumption?

The AAS uses participatory methods to conduct research. We will sample foods along the supply chain. We also collect info on storage and hygiene. Fish will follow a similar approach.

Why did you identify sour milk as a problem? What pathogens could be present?

Sour milk was identified is consumed in large quantities and we know relatively little about its safety – we do know it is less safe than boiled or pasteurized milk. We are screening fresh milk samples for: 1) Total Bacterial Count (TBC), 2) Faecal coliforms count, 3) Antibiotic resistant E. coli, 4) Salmonella spp., 5) Brucella spp., 6) Toxigenic E.coli, 7) Entertoxin producing Staph aureus, 8) bTB, 9) Campylobacter, 10) (Listeria may be added). We also hope to test for aflatoxins in fish.

How about insecticide treated nets?

With regard to insecticide-treated nets for controlling flies in the fish markets, it would be important to consider traditional perceptions of nets and colour. With malaria control this has proved to be a major constraint in some countries. After efficacy studies we intend to pilot this intervention to identify problems like this that were not anticipated. So far we have conducted a small survey (semi-structured interviews) to get an idea of traders’ and consumers’ perceptions on the use of nets-mixed views, but most of them seemed eager to try the intervention

Useful suggestions: Contact the colleagues from ZimCLIFS in Harare. Exchange notes with Barbara Sv of FSZ team here in Addis who is leading a similar process.

IPM FSZ – Food Safety and Ecohealth in Vietnam – Hung Nguyen

How are you addressing gender in food safety and risk management?

Women and men are involved differently in food safety. We see clearly role differentiation in slaughterhouses and selling pork in the markets between men and women. Men mainly work in pig slaughterhouses and women mainly sell pork. For food purchase and preparation, in most of the cases this is done by women. The consequence of the difference in occupational exposure might lead to different health risks and of course women play a role in managing risks for food safety.

How do norms and social perceptions affect food selection and consumption?

In one of the study sites in center of Vietnam, people prefer buying pork from less than 50kg pigs (they are not purchasing indigenous pigs, which are naturally small but rather small crops bred pigs of that could grow to 100 kg or more). This comes from the belief that small pigs were fed mainly with vegetables and food residues from households and therefore that meat is better than pork from bigger pigs that are believed to be fed with concentrate feed. This perception has some implications: pigs are sold quite early and pig keepers might not benefit from fast growth of pigs after 50kg thus reducing profits and pork availability. It might also affect meat quality. Another perception is that some of the pig organs are good for children and old people (heart, stomach, liver) and these can influence food selection and accessibility. Some highly risky food such as raw pig blood or fermented pork are also consumed in the country; again this consumption is influenced by beliefs and preferences.

What is essential for future “best bets” for improving pork safety?

We are conducting risk assessments which help identify the problems of food safety and potential solutions, but risk management needs to go beyond technical measures to reduce risk. Among others, the important role of education and training for farmers and self-policy through farmer organization, and cultural/perception (as mentioned above) need to be addressed.

How does ecohealth provide a guiding framework to expand partnership with other programs?

Whatever we call this approach – One Health, Ecohealth, integrative approach or other terms – the underlying idea is to break the silos to bring different disciplines to work together and to try to integrate different types of knowledge to address a common research questions without making every disciplines become generalist. In this sense Ecohealth can help to create new linkages between FSZ and other programs like LSE (environment), LGI (value chain) or bioscience (diagnostics) for instance.

1. Systems analysis and scaling for impact: The relevance of this LSE theme depends upon strong links with other programmes. There are challenges of finding data for good targeting but also impact assessment. This is clearly an area for collaboration across several programs. This analysis needs to be forward looking as well (scenarios, anyone?). For impact, we need to a) bring social issues and indicators into the analysis, and b) work with implementing partners to prioritize options and technologies.

2. Dryland systems are an opportunity for growth, but the science needs to offer solutions that work in these contexts. This is challenging given changing dynamics in pastoral systems. Four key areas were noted, namely forage production and management; value chains; breeding and improvement of genetic resources; and data collection for M&E. We need innovative thinking on rangeland ecology and options for “restoration”, with our partners.

3. Ecosystem / disease interactions: collaborative work on vector born diseases and their emergence/ re-emergence due to system changes is a great opportunity for ILRI, especially if it is linked to developing solutions that work.

4. Ecosystem/ productivity interactions: Two interesting points; Firstly, ecosystems could be mapped and included in the systems intensification work! This helps get at all of the tradeoffs. Secondly, productivity should be the entry point for discussions about the importance of enhancing ecosystem services, as this is what will engage smallholders.

Environmental Governance in Extensive Livestock Systems – Summary of Comments

1. Other ILRI teams are interested in paying more attention to the institutional, governance, and power dimensions in various streams of work, including feed and forages and animal diseases. This is more than simply adding a governance dimension to these areas, but would involve taking a stronger systems approach both in the research and in the collaboration with other stakeholders. Therefore, innovation platform work in these areas would also be connected.
2. Perhaps the most obvious collaboration involving research on institutions and governance would be between LSE and LGI. We should schedule time to share each other’s findings and lessons learned, and then brainstorm.
3. There is a need for more concerted work on NRM.  This should be integrally connected with research and action on value chains and productivity improvement. Inquiry questions include identifying critical success factors and means of scaling up, the degree of productivity improvement that can be expected from improved NRM, and how power dynamics interact with new interventions such as fodder production and market development.
4. Innovation systems needs greater. This is both in terms of ILRI engaging with innovation systems and looking at innovation systems as objects to be researched. The engagement with innovation systems must be two-way, both providing a pathway for our research to have impact and providing a means for stakeholders to influence what we are researching.  The research on innovations systems should investigate an array of issues, several of which are directly connected to governance: participation, power dynamics within innovation systems, learning, how networks enable or constrain innovation systems, and questions around sustainability and scaling up and out. Creative thinking is needed here, particularly for work in extensive drylands: there may be non-conventional links to service provision and innovation in other sectors such as education and health.

Livestock Production & the Environment

1. Emission estimates from “local livestock under local conditions” has the potential to significantly change global livestock emissions maps by constructing robust herd/flock models that are well-paramaterised for different systems. With this, we can scale out estimates and explore the impacts of different interventions on both production and emissions. This is challenging given the heterogeneous nature of systems in sub-Saharan Africa. While we emphasize field measurements, these will be linked to models.
2. The strategic focus on direct livestock emissions is a strength of this research agenda. Work has already started with a focus in East Africa. We are also including productivity and soil health dimensions.
3. Collaboration: Reliable data on feed quantities is hardly available. We need to work together on this, and on incentives to stimulate investment and behaviour change.
4. Mitigation interventions are central. There is debate around intensification – efficiency gains if livestock numbers continue to increase.

1. Collaboration: There is demand and opportunities for PTVC to collaborate with other programs at ILRI. The size of the PTVC team combined with its other work in the program is a constraint. Nonetheless, great ideas and interests were communicated and shared, especially from LSE (brainstorming on ideas on rangeland management issues) and Bioscience (market assessment studies of the vaccines being developed). PTVC will follow up with LSE and Bioscience researchers.
2.  ASSP program: The presentation did not mention collaboration with ASSP. Key collaboration area include creating linkages in producing joint value chain analyses and support the LIVES project in Ethiopia, strengthening ASSP collaboration in West Africa on red meat value chain developments, and creating synergies with the ReSAKSS country node in Tanzania.
3.  PTVC visibility – PTVC needs to be more visible within. Some recognized progress that PTVC has made in external communications
4. Appreciation for the need of PTVC  – Work is needed in markets, policy and institutions, especially in relation to markets as markets, as a pre-requisite for investment in productivity. Changing policy and institutions can have a role on scaling out technical interventions.
5.  PTVC input in other projects – As it is small, PTVC cannot contribute to data analysis of projects it helped design. PTVC noted its efforts in tool development and data collection. There are both demand and supply elements to this. It is important for others to be clear in their collaboration ideas where they need analytical input. Data analysis cannot be done in a vacuum. Clear requests, research questions and required data analysis, coupled with means to fund this is necessary. PTVC cited planned work to use existing L&F data as part of its work funded by L&F in 2015.
6.  PTVC and LGI synergies – Both PTVC and LGI work on value chains. LGI focuses on gender and impact assessment in value chains. PTVC uses the value chain approach to develop tools and methods to assess value chain performance, using indicators such as competitiveness, and testing these in bilateral projects. Collaboration should be fostered between the two programs. The perception that both are doing the same work is exaggerated. Both should strengthen the other (e.g. impact assessment work in LGI and policy analysis in PTVC).

Summary of Comments on PTVC, Strategic Foresight Presentation by Dolapo Enahoro

There were a numbers of questions seeking to clarify the Model’s components and suggestions were made on possible linkages to improve the modeling platform below:

• Does the model incorporate societal trends such as population and food consumption? How does it handle the divide between macro-level trends and modeling and the micro-level impacts on welfare such as livelihoods and equity? At what scale is gender important in the model?
• The model seemed complex and quantitative. Incorporating participatory or qualitative assessments could improve the value of analyses
• Can the model better account for non-ruminant species with active links to Value Chain modeling? Can VC-commodity specific simulations be done?
• Robust herd and flock modeling is needed to capture yield gaps and productivity changes that interventions will achieve. Is this possible in the current model or is a complementary model needed?

Questions and comments on Model Outputs and their use are here summarized:

• The model output(s) were not clear
• The use of (outputs of) the integrated model in informing other models should be explored, to facilitate working across scales and to improve links to impact
• Do model outputs from livestock strengthening work at ILRI exist; they have not yet been communicated
• Some of the global results did not make sense; country-level simulation could provide more benefit

Model application and Collaboration within and outside ILRI

• It is important to structure intervention modelling to fit into ILRI’s core areas of research. In general, we need more cost-benefit analyses of ILRI’s projects and programs
• There is need to harmonize or better coordinate system modeling across programs and CRPs we are involved in, to take advantages of synergies
• There are practical challenges to collaboration between PTVC and other programs. These may need addressing at Management level
• Increased management support could improve the profile of ILRI’s foresight work in relation to the broader work that it feeds into in PIM and IFPRI, and more globally
• Ownership of the livestock component of the model is needed. ILRI is establishing itself as the lead center for analyzing global livestock issues and the onus remains with ILRI to maintain this relevance in and outside of PIM

Summary of key points arising from ReSAKSS presentation on ‘Understanding Dynamics of Intra-regional Trade in Food Staples in COMESA Region

1. On ReSAKSS, its focus and how it links to other ILRI programs

ReSAKSS was established in 2006, to support evidence and outcome-based planning and implementation of agricultural-sector policies and strategies in Africa. It offers high-quality analyses and knowledge products to improve policy making, track progress, and facilitate policy dialogue, benchmarking, review and mutual learning processes of the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) implementation agenda. It is organized into four nodes: Africa-wide node (facilitated by IFPRI and working closely with AUC/NEPAD), West-Africa node (facilitated by IITA and working closely with ECOWAS), Southern Africa node (facilitated by IWMI and working closely with SADC) and the East and Central Africa node (facilitated by ILRI and working closely with COMESA).

The ReSAKSS-ECA research agenda is set through a consultative process through its COMESA chaired Steering Committee, with membership from EAC and COMESA business councils, government representatives, East Africa Farmers Federation, and development partners, among others.

In ILRI, ReSAKSS focuses on supporting implementation of CAADP through analysis (trade, agriculture growth options, role of livestock in economies, etc) and policy engagement, CAADP M&E, capacity building, and knowledge management. It works in agriculture and rural sectors without necessarily focusing on livestock. There has been considerable collaboration with PTVC on capacity building and trade analysis, and there is considerable scope to intensify collaboration with PTVC and other ILRI programmes. We will explore more opportunities for joint research activities and policy outreach.

2. There is need to include inputs such as feeds among commodities whose trade is tracked in the region

This issue was raised by a number of commentators. We acknowledge it is important but we have highlighted the challenge of data quality. However, ReSAKSS is working with partners to enhance the quality of trade data and there might be opportunities to revisit the issue in future.

3. Need to highlight findings and outcomes of the study especially on welfare impacts
4. We acknowledge that the presentation was too brief but more details can be shared either through reports with individuals or through regular institute seminars.